Each year, we exhibit at the annual Rochester Home Show. We get to meet new homeowners and catch up with our garage coatings customers. Sometimes, we even get a great story to share. This year, we spoke with a Do-It-Yourself homeowner whose story spans two year.

Our Story Begins With...

In 2014, the homeowner Joe, approached us in our booth to ask about our garage floor coatings. After about 20 minutes of conversation, Joe informed them of his intentions to use DIY epoxy floor paints to spruce up his one car garage.

Fast forward to 2015, Joe returned to our booth once more. Speaking with us again, he shared his DIY story. The highlights of this 30 minute plus conversation are as follows:

He removed the existing garage floor paint using a 4" hand grinder and cupwheels (approx $150 investment). This portion took 4 days and ended with a sore body. Plus it pretty much ruined the shop vac used to pull up the dust ($75).

He acid etched the garage floor two times just to ensure a good prep; two more days down ($25 of supplies).

He applied an epoxy/urethane kit which included vinyl chips over a period of three days and then had to let the materials cure for another 3 days ($900 for the kit).

Overall, Joe is pretty happy with the floor, but it has had a few minor issues (no additional details provided on those issues).

Joe said it took a lot more effort than he had expected - figuring he had over 40 hours of his time invested in this project.

Our Story Ends With ...

To summarize, Joe had spent over $1,150 and a normal work week of time on this one car, garage floor coating. He lost the use of his garage for nearly two weeks.

What was our response to this story? Joe's 320 square foot garage would have been $1,500 if we had coated it. Joe admitted he would not repeat that DIY project.

Prologue to this DIY Story

While we didn't want to go into the differences any further, I thought I would point out several more items that are as important, if not more than just the cost.

1) With our polyaspartic system, one of our teams would have completed the entire process in 1 day vs. Joe investing 9 days.

2) Our coatings would have returned the garage to full service in less than 24 hours vs. Joe waiting over 72 hours to use his garage again.

3) Our polyaspartic topcoat would be three times thicker and considerably stronger than Joe's two urethane layers.

4) With a floor from us, Joe would have a 15 year warranty and the same satisfaction that 1000+ homeowners already have in our service area.

5) Our crew would have prepped his floor(removing the existing floor paints) with our world class planetary grinders and HEPA dust vacuums in less than 2 hours. Joe would not have sore knees, not exposed himself to breathing airborne concrete dust or have been exposed to the acids & their fumes.

I'm not saying that no one should ever attempt to coat their own garage. Just be sure it's worth the time and effort. Plus, don't purchase the cheap epoxy paint kits at the big box stores or get ripped off with overpriced kits on the web. There are some great products out there - just be sure to shop around.